Part 72 (1/2)

Jerry looked daunted. 'Sir, I must have misunderstood my training.'

'Yes, I think you have. There is an artistic principle not a rule - that volitionals should be treated consistently. But to insist on kindness would be to eliminate that degree of freedom for which volition in creatures was invented. Without the possibility of tragedy the volitionals might as well be golems.'

'Sir, I think I understand that. But would the Chairman please amplify the artistic principle of consistent treatment?'

'Nothing- complex about it, Lucifer. For a creature to act out its own minor part, the rules under which it acts must be either known to it or be such that the rules can become known through trial and error - with error not always fatal. In short the creature must be able to learn and to benefit by its experience.'

'Sir, that is exactly my complaint about my brother. See that record before You. Yahweh baited a trap and thereby lured this creature into a contest that it could not win then declared the game over and took the prize from it. And, although this is an extreme case, a destruction test, this nevertheless is typical of his treatment of all his volitionals. Games so rigged that his creatures cannot win. For six millennia I got his losers... and many of them arrived in h.e.l.l catatonic with fear - fear of me, fear of an eternity of torture. They can't believe they've been lied to. My therapists have to work hard to reorient the poor slobs. It's not funny.'

Mr Koshchei did not appear to listen. He leaned back in His old wooden swivel chair, making it creak - and, yes, I do not know that the creak came out of my memories - and looked again at my memoir. He scratched the grey fringe around His bald pate and made an irritating noise, half whistle, half hum - also out of my buried memories of Doc Simmons, but utterly real.

This female creature, the bait. A volitional?'

'In my opinion, yes, Mr Chairman.'

(Good heavens, Jerry! Don't you know?)

'Then I think we may a.s.sume that this one would not be satisfied with a simulacrum.' He hummed and whistled through His teeth. 'So let us look deeper.'

Mr Koshchei's office seemed small when we were admitted; now there were several others present: another angel who looked a lot like Jerry but older and with a pinched expression unlike Jerry's expansive joviality, another older character who wore a long coat, a big broad-brimmed hat, a patch over one eye, and had a crow sitting on his shoulder, and - why, confound his arrogance! - Sam Crumpacker, that Dallas shyster.

Back of Crumpacker three men were lined up, well-fed types, and all vaguely familiar. I knew I had seen them before.

Then I got it. I had won a hundred (or was it a thousand?) from each of them on a most foolhardy bet.

I looked back at Crumpacker, and was angrier than ever - the scoundrel was now wearing my face!

I turned to Jerry and started to whisper urgently. 'See lhat man over there? The one -'

'Shut up.'

'But -'

'Be quiet and listen.'

Jerry's brother was speaking. 'So who's complaining? You want I should put on my Jesus hat and prove it? The fact that some of them make it proves it ain't too hard - Seven point one percent in this last batch, not counting golems, Not good enough? Who says?'

The old boy in the black hat said, 'I count anything less' than fifty percent a failure.'

'So who's talking? Who lost ground to me every year for a millennium? How you handle your creatures; that's your business. What I do with mine; that's my business.

'That's why I'm here,' the big hat replied. 'You grossly interfered with one of mine.'

'Not, me!' Yahweh hooked a thumb at the man who man who managed to look like both me and Sam Crumpacker. 'That one! My Shabbes goy. A little rough? So whose boy is he? Answer that!'

Mr Koshchei tapped my memoir, spoke to the man with my face. 'Loki, how many places do you figure in this story?'

'Depends on how You figure it, Chief. Eight or nine places, if You count the walk-ons. All through it, when You consider that I spent four solid weeks softening up this foxy schoolteacher so that she would roll over and pant when Joe Nebbish came along.'

Jerry had a big fist around my upper ~ left arm. 'Keep quiet!'